Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Aye, Mickey. And thanks. Did your own work go well?”

“Well, I met the man. And I believe we took the measure of one another. But as for whether we have a deal, that I don’t know. We have to show him something first.”

“But that part’s easy, isn’t it? Dioguardi already said he would-”

“Starting tomorrow, we’ll just see about that, Big Brian,” Shalare said. He tapped the fingers of both his hands lightly on the dashboard, playing a song only he could hear.

1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:56

“Like I said, I came of age right in the middle of the Depression,” Sherman said to Ruth. “It was hard times.”

Harder on some than others, Ruth thought, remembering. She was next to Sherman on the couch, hands clasped in her lap. Her burnt-cork eyes never left his face.

“There wasn’t any work,” Sherman went on, “except the WPA stuff. Didn’t bother my father much-he’d been a drunk all his life, so he just stayed drunk. It was my mother who fed us.”

It was me who fed us, Ruth thought. Only I wasn’t the mother, I was the child. The rented child.

“My mother wasn’t a church person, but she had a sense of right and wrong that would have shamed a preacher. There were only two ways a man could go back then. Get on with the government, somehow. Or pick up the gun.”

“So you became a policeman?”

Sherman made a sound Ruth had never heard before, but instantly recognized. He’s calling home, she said to herself.

“Not at first,” Sherman finally said, holding her soft brown eyes with his own pair of faded-denim blues. “The only way to become a cop in Locke City back then was… Well, it’s the same way it is today: you have to buy your job. Today, you can buy it with things other than money. If you know someone, someone political, I mean, you can go to them, make the right promises, and they’ll maybe take you on. But back then it was always done in cash.

“It was all a crazy circle,” he said, nodding his head as if agreeing with some unseen person. “If you had enough money to buy a job, well, you didn’t need a job. Not a job as a cop, anyway. People didn’t just want that job for the paycheck, Ruth. There were always plenty of extra ways to make money…”

“I know,” she said, whisper-soft.

“So I made… I guess you’d call it kind of a bargain. I knew there was only one way for me to get the money to become a cop. So I swore, if… He let me get away with it, I would be the most honest cop there ever was. I’d never steal another dime as long as I lived.”

“So you did pick up the gun, but just one time, is that what you’re saying, Sherman?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I never told anybody else.”

“Oh,” was all Ruth said. She felt as if a malicious nurse had just given her an injection of sadness. I get it now. Once you get past the dollar tricks in alleys, once you start dealing with a higher class of customer, they all have a story they need to tell.

“It’s not that,” Sherman said, sharply.

Ruth sat up as if she had just been slapped. Her cheeks darkened, but she didn’t say a word.

“You’re not… Whatever you think you are, you’re not that to me,” Sherman told her. “I don’t have any need to tell my secrets, like going to confession. What I… trusted you with, what I come… used to come… to your place for, that’s nothing. I don’t mean it’s not a secret-sure it is-but it doesn’t tell you anything about me. This… what I’m saying, it does. I hope it does, anyway.”

“I already knew,” Ruth said.

“How could you? It was almost thirty years-”

“I don’t mean about what you did to get the money to become a policeman, Sherman. I mean, I already knew you. I’m ashamed of myself. For what I was thinking before. I don’t know how you knew, but…”

“I know you, Ruth. Like you say you know me. I don’t know how I know, or how you know. But… I want you to hear… what I have to say. It’s important to me.”

“It’s important to me, too,” Ruth said.

Sherman watched her eyes for a long moment, polygraphing. Ruth dropped her curtain, let him in. Sherman nodded slowly and heavily, as if taking a vow.

“Remember what I said about my mother?” the big detective began. “Remember what I said about her shaming a preacher? Well, that’s the opposite-the reverse, really-of what happened. The preacher, in the church we used to go to, he shamed her. That sanctimonious dog stood up before everyone and denounced my mother. For the crime of feeding her child, he said she was going to burn in hellfire for all eternity.”

“What could possibly have made him-?”

“My mother went with men for money,” Sherman said, tonelessly. “It started when I was little. When my father wanted to bond me out. You know what that is?”

“Yes,” Ruth said. Some children get sold to farmers, she thought. And some get sold to pimps.

“My mother knew what that would mean. She and my father fought about it. I could hear every word. In that house, you always could. She told my father she was going out to get some money. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew it was a bad thing. My father didn’t say anything.”

Sherman lowered his head, dropped his voice.

“When my mother came back, it was real late. Almost morning. I remember my father calling her that word. ‘Whore.’ He whipped her. With his belt. Then he took the money she brought home.”

“Filthy pig,” Ruth whispered.

“No pig would do what he did,” Sherman said. “My mother kept me from being bonded out, but it cost her… everything.”

“What happened to him?”

“How do you know something did?” Sherman asked.

“I just know, Sherman.”

“He had an accident. Out in the barn. He was drunk. Must have tripped and fell down from the loft. Hit his head against an anvil. Right after that, he ran off.”

“Oh.”

“That was when I was thirteen. I wanted to quit school, but my mother wouldn’t let me. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t go against her. You know what she told me, Ruth? She said she was already damned. I couldn’t save her; nobody could. But if I ever became a… bad person, then all her sacrifice would have been for nothing.”

“You really loved her,” Ruth said.

“I always will. My… I was going to say ‘friends,’ but that would be a lie… the kids I went to school with, they knew what my mother did. So I turned into a pretty good fighter. Everyone said I would end up in reform school, but we made them all eat crow at the end. My mother was so proud when I became a cop.”

“Is she still-?”

“She died a couple of weeks after I got sworn in,” Sherman said. “She’d been sick for years. It was like she was holding on, just waiting for that.”

“Is that why you…?”

“Feel the way I do about you?” the big man said, meeting the challenge head-on. “No, Ruth. Listen, my mother never was a whore. I don’t care what people called her, or called what she did. She was a mother, protecting her child. My father was the whore, selling his honor and his name for a few dollars, then drinking up all the money because he couldn’t look himself in the mirror.

“My father wasn’t a man,” the big detective said, “but my mother, she was a woman. A real woman. And so are you, Ruth. Understand?”

“Yes,” Ruth said, between her tears.

1959 October 06 Tuesday 19:04

“Wow! Where did you get this jalopy?” Tussy said, as Dett held the door of the ’49 Ford open for her.

“I just borrowed it,” he said. “From a guy I met. Actually, we traded. He had a big date, and he thought the Buick would help him impress the girl.”